Smoking, Marriage and Climate: What Can I Do? (2)

This week I have a guest blogger, Doug Glancy, who was one of the student advocates responsible for starting my class on climate change problem solving. Doug’s piece continues the series in response to the question, “What can I do about climate change?” It is a call for social organization.

What Smoking and Marriage Equality Can Teach Activists About Efforts to Catalyze Climate Action

In February, Duke University released a poll that found that more than 84% of Americans believe climate change is occurring. Climate activists were elated, and many began to say that we’ve turned the corner on efforts to catalyze action. However, beneath the encouraging headline was a far more important number: only one third of Americans support federal efforts to address the issue. I am not discounting the fact that the vast majority of Americans now believe climate change is occurring. However, overselling this statistic is fraught with peril, as it is the second number that defines our direction when the rubber hits the road.

For affirmation of this belief, one need only look at the decades-long struggle to reduce smoking. As early as the 1950’s, the majority of doctors believed smoking posed significant health risks. By the 1970’s, the majority of Americans believed that smoking had deleterious effects. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the late 80’s that overall smoking rates began to plummet. The transition did not occur because a doctor or scientist said smoking was bad for one’s health, it occurred because smoking became socially unacceptable.

Unfortunately, in the battle to address climate change we do not have the luxury of time for opinion to sway. Fortunately, the strategic marriage of behavioral economics and technology provides the tools to speed up the pendulum. What is needed now is messaging which leverages cutting edge research into why we make the choices we do including core drivers such as moral conviction, a desire for equality and good old-fashioned peer pressure. (For a quick introduction read Contagious by Jonah Berger).

One need only look to the events of last week to see how opinions can change in a timeframe exponentially quicker than in the past. As recently as the late 90’s, the vast majority of American opposed extending marriage rights to the LBGT community. Just over a decade later, over half the nation supports marriage rights.

There is little doubt that some of the explanation for this remarkable achievement lies with Americans expanding their view of morality and furthering equality. However, it would be shortsighted to discount the tremendous impact of peer pressure. Last week, despite little coordinated effort, nearly 3 million Americans changed their Facebook profile to support marriage equality. These 3 million individual decisions provided a social cue to tens of millions more.

What does this all mean for the efforts to address climate change? It means that we must move beyond statistics about the beliefs of 99% scientists. It means we must move beyond over-reliance on frames, such as the plight of the polar bear, which only speak to certain segments of society. It means we must make addressing climate the moral imperative of the day and use technology-assisted peer pressure to spread the message. We have the knowledge and technology to be good ancestors, its time to leverage it.

Doug has over a decade working on climate, energy and sustainability issues across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. He holds a BS in Political Science from Trinity College and MBA/MS from the University of Michigan, where he focused on climate change and corporate sustainability. In addition to speaking engagements, Doug has contributed to a groundbreaking report on Corporate Climate Change Strategies for the Pew Center on Climate Change, and led two delegations to the United Nations Climate Change Conference. He is an Executive Board member of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.

OSLO, Apr. 7, 2013 (Reuters) — Climate change could get worse quickly if huge amounts of extra heat absorbed by the oceans are released back into the air, scientists said after unveiling new research showing that oceans have helped mitigate the effects of warming since 2000.

At first I thought you just didn't understand what a revenue neutral carbon tax was. Now I'm convinced that you don't care what it is, you're just upset over anything you perceive of as a tax.

The description in the proposal is not revenue neutral.

In the very reasonable scenarios I described above, a worker loses hundreds of dollars per year just driving to work.

I came up with $500 in carbon tax in the 12th year of the U.S. proposal if the guy with a tool trailer drove an average of 30 miles per day. So he's lost $500 in net income.

Then when he goes to the grocery store, everything is more expensive, because the producers must raise their prices to cover their increased costs of production and shipping. When he buys clothing, even work clothes, it costs more due to increased fuel costs. When he buys a replacement nail gun, it costs more. When he gets his tires rotated or replaced that will cost more too.

Based on the 12th year rates in that U.S. bill proposal, the real increase in his minimum net cost of living (counting the $500 dollars here, since driving to work is required,) for himself and his family will probably go up by a total of several thousand dollars by the time all the feed backs and trickle-downs happen. I say "trickle down" in a negative sense, because farmers and business owners will have to "pass the savings on to you" in order to make up for all the extra taxes they'll be paying.

If you want to make this "neutral" it would require a credit based on receipts for your person fuel purchases, but the credit you are owed for the fraction it screws up in the price of everything isn't easily calculated.

So when is the Gov going to give me(the lower income)a 16% rebate due to the monetary policy its been pursuing?The value of the dollar has dropped by 16%? This decline is a stealth inflation. Debt and printing of Money/monetizing our debt.So the Federal Government is producing money out of essentially thin air,causing its devaluation. And now people want to funnel money through the US Federal Gov. (rev neutral)and trust that they will give back to the poor and spend the rest on things like r&d and the increased cost to others will be incentive to consume less and "change".So isnt the inflationary devaluation of the US $$$$$ already causing a change in behavior?Oh it is causing a change in behavior and drastically altering the economy,with a resultant reduction in Federal tax recipients. Bring in Carbon Tax and OMG what a great outcome that will be.

This type of scheme is based on fantasy,based on trust that The Federal Government can manage its budget.My goodness,just the other day a report came out that the Sandy relief fund is missing millions of $$$$$$$$$$$...Fraud? Waste? lack of any way to track?Answer.. Dont know!Its just not been accounted for.

Carbon tax results and accountability? Revenue neutral?

BWAHAHAHA!

Stealth inflation? Every post I've seen of yours on here regarding economics has been completely devoid of any real economic theory and just your anti-government, feelings on the issues. You are against a carbon tax and against government regulation and seemly against any government interference in climate change what-so-ever. So what are you for? It can't be free market and private enterprise solving the problem, because they have been proven to be just as wasteful and fraudulent.

Thank you for that link. I have re-posted this on the Arctic Sea Ice Forum on the topic of "Global Impact of Declining Arctic Sea Ice (Economical and Societal)". This topic, to date, has over 1,900 pages views and 90 replies!

Study out of Spain & France today concurring with the US study out last month about the oceans absorbing greater than usual amounts of heat..

Guemas's study, twinning observations and computer models, showed that natural La Nina weather events in the Pacific around the year 2000 brought cool waters to the surface that absorbed more heat from the air. In another set of natural variations, the Atlantic also soaked up more heat.

"Global warming is continuing but it's being manifested in somewhat different ways," said Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. Warming can go, for instance, to the air, water, land or to melting ice and snow.

Warmth is spreading to ever deeper ocean levels, he said, adding that pauses in surface warming could last 15-20 years.

"Recent warming rates of the waters below 700 meters appear to be unprecedented," he and colleagues wrote in a study last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we takestrong action now.The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious globalthreat, and it demands an urgent global response.This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climatechange and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques toassess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by theReview leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action faroutweigh the economic costs of not acting.Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world %u2013access to water, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millionsof people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the worldwarms.Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don%u2019tact, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impactsis taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.In contrast, the costs of action %u2013 reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid theworst impacts of climate change %u2013 can be limited to around 1% of global GDP eachyear.The investment that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effecton the climate in the second half of this century and in the next. Our actions now andover the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic andsocial activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and theeconomic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult orimpossible to reverse these changes.So prompt and strong action is clearly warranted. Because climate change is aglobal problem, the response to it must be international. It must be based on ashared vision of long-term goals and agreement on frameworks that will accelerateaction over the next decade, and it must build on mutually reinforcing approaches atnational, regional and international level.

Quoting misanthrope:The problem here is that you seem unwilling to accept that there is a very substantial external cost to society from the use of fossil fuels (see comment #312). I'm wondering how you justify continued subsidies to an industry that obviously needs no subsidy. Personally, I'm a big fan of capitalism, and I say let the price reflect the true cost and then let the markets have their way.

Then manual labor jobs should be paid more than white collar jobs, because they have a vastly increased rate of accident, illness related to exposure (think miners and such, and so on). their wage should reflect the real cost of their labor, which should include their increased medical costs for their vastly more detrimental, and dangerous work, which exposes them to an increased rate of toxins, pathogens, and accidents, which produces cumulative illnesses and wear and tear on the body.

If capitalism should reflect the true cost of doing business, employers should be responsible for all healthcare, since a person must live somewhere and our economy mostly demands that you work for someone else, and they should especially be responsible for all healthcare related to illness or injury directly or indirectly related to work or driving to work. After all, it's certainly not fair that a worker's wage doesn't pay for basic healthcare, dentistry, and eye exams.

Remove subsidies from the existing energy companies, fine. I don't really have a problem with it personally.

"Economic assessments of proposed policy to put a price on carbon emissions are in widespread agreement that the net economic impact will be minor. The costs over the next several decades center around $100 per average family, or about 75 cents per person per week, and a GDP reduction of less than 1%. Moreover, the benefits outweigh the costs several times over, as real-world examples illustrate."

Their definition of "average" is heavily weighted by city dwellers.

"Average" does not tell you what happens to real world individuals.

It would cost me personally just $69 per year in additional fuel expenses per year. Not a "family", just me. It would cost my sister and her husband about $420 per year in additional fuel costs. It would cost my brother and his family some ungodly amount I don't even know how to calculate.

One of the women I used to work with in the lab would spend about an extra $300 per year on fuel costs.

And by the way, these are just "driving to work and back" fuel costs. This isn't going shopping for food, clothing, etc, and this isn't driving to a friend's house or anything else. This is just "required to get to work" expenses.

For goodness sake, how is this only going to impact people in the north by $100 per family? I can easily guesstimate close to an additional $100 in heating costs alone.

Before these carbon taxes are implemented, I demand that a millionaires tax be introduced, and the additional circus clown tax on actors, singers, musicians, and athletes be introduced.

If you raised an additional 10% tax on professional athletes. You'd get something like 45 million from just the NFL quarterbacks alone, and each team has 10 other offensive starters, and 11 defensive starters. Buy the time we consider all major sports, we'd be talking at least a couple BILLION in additional tax revenues, and "normal people" who make an honest living wouldn't be hurt.

It is only fair that people who literally get paid to waste money should pay the highest tax rates.

At first I thought you just didn't understand what a revenue neutral carbon tax was. Now I'm convinced that you don't care what it is, you're just upset over anything you perceive of as a tax.

Rather than blather on about $10 milk, why don't you unleash the power of Google and find out what milk costs in BC? Rather than bemoaning the hard fate of tradesmen, check the prices that electricians or plumbers charge in BC against what they charge in Ont.

The Conservative Party in BC is against the carbon tax. They have one representative & he was elected as a Liberal, then changed parties - last election they won almost 3% of the vote.

Factories that grew up under the clouds spewing from coal fired stacks will be taxed more than those basking in the glow radiating from Nuke facilities. They'll probably move into newer, more efficient abodes where Hydro or Nuke provides the energy.

BTW - what factories are left in the US anyway? I thought you sent those jobs to China.

Those that wish to trundle through urban neighborhoods in enormous Hummers will be free to do so - as long as they don't mind taking out a loan to fill the thing.

UPS, at least here in Canada have vehicles running on LPG - saves the company money & saves the environment (to some degree.) A carbon tax will incentivize others.

I don't think a carbon tax will do enough fast enough to be the solution - But it's certainly enough to get everyone working on ways to cut carbon usage.

"Economic assessments of proposed policy to put a price on carbon emissions are in widespread agreement that the net economic impact will be minor. The costs over the next several decades center around $100 per average family, or about 75 cents per person per week, and a GDP reduction of less than 1%. Moreover, the benefits outweigh the costs several times over, as real-world examples illustrate."

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) unveiled ambitious climate and energy legislation on Thursday. In our current sclerotic political environment, it has pretty much zero chance of passing in the Senate and negative chance of passing in the House. ( from the article in TheGrist.)

I don't see that changing soon, do you?

Look how ridiculous some scenarios are, which I thought of, which this bill would create.

1, Green energy would get taxed by the carbon tax!

Wind turbines would be taxed by the carbon tax, because many of their components are manufactured in factories powered by coal, and because they involve a lot of concrete. The same would be true for parabolic trough solar, because of all that energy used to melt and mold glass and metal they require during manufacture.

2, Another "bad luck penalty":

Two factories:

Factory A is a nuclear power grid, factory B is on a coal power grid, they are otherwise identical, and have been at their present locations for 20 years.

Products manufactured at factory A are not penalized because they have near-zero carbon footprint. Products manufactured at factory B are penalized, through no fault of the owners, because the only power facility in the area happened to be coal at the time they decided to build.

This may even violate the "No ex post facto law" clause in the constitution, because you are punishing someone for something they did which was not a crime at the time, and which they have no significant control over to change or which would be too expensive to change, which was in this case the decision of where to build their factory. Had they been "lucky" and built near a nuclear power facility, they would not have been penalized.

3, Nuke plants and hydro plants will be penalized some too though, because of all that concrete and steel re-bar that goes into their construction.

Quoting BaltimoreBrian:Dr. Rood I read The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver and saw that he interviewed you extensively. What did you think of his concepts of statistical analysis? Mr. Silver was spot on in his political analysis of the 2012 election.

From my perspective on having both a social science background as well as a statistics background, Nate Silver is something of a super star in bringing solid analysis to the main stream. The type of analysis Silver does, is pretty much textbook. Amongst my group of friends in the social sciences, we all hold Nate Silver to an extremely high regard, not just for his analyses themselves, but also how he discussed them and represented them to the public. I wish more people had to take a basic data analysis and research and methods course in school, if they had, Nate Silver's election analysis wouldn't have been much of a surprise. We all agreed with him and his prediction from the get go.

Ok, that's growing to $32.32 per ton in the 12th year, which is still far below Europe's proposal.

But what you don't understand is there's a right way and a wrong way to encourage new technology, and trying to tax everything "less than optimal" into oblivion isn't the right way.

Don't lose any sleep over a possible carbon tax, RTS:

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) unveiled ambitious climate and energy legislation on Thursday. In our current sclerotic political environment, it has pretty much zero chance of passing in the Senate and negative chance of passing in the House. ( from the article in TheGrist.)

Dr. Rood I read The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver and saw that he interviewed you extensively. What did you think of his concepts of statistical analysis? Mr. Silver was spot on in his political analysis of the 2012 election.

Quoting pintada:Actually ... the best thing that can happen at this point is kill the debt slave economy and leave the carbon in the ground where it belongs. The Sanders bill should be re-written so it does just that.

When you make an EV which at least 2/3rds of Americans can afford to buy, and when you make an electric Semi truck which doesn't waste more space on batteries than it's worth, let me know.

Regarding your argument, I hear you. It is much more important to keep our debt slave economy running than it is to try to prevent a 6 degree C world. Yup, keep those shipping costs down, and we can overshoot even more, making the end of the ecosystem and our species inevitable. Good plan!!! LOL.

Actually ... the best thing that can happen at this point is kill the debt slave economy and leave the carbon in the ground where it belongs. The Sanders bill should be re-written so it does just that.

Ok, that's growing to $32.32 per ton in the 12th year, which is still far below Europe's proposal.

But what you don't understand is there's a right way and a wrong way to encourage new technology, and trying to tax everything "less than optimal" into oblivion isn't the right way.

Quoting FLwolverine:More on the Britsh Columbia carbon tax - perhaps soon to be the former taxLink:

“The tax has been – and is – unfair to British Columbians who live in rural and northern regions of the province,” said Scott Anderson, chair of the BC Conservatives’ Public Finance committee, and candidate in Vernon-Monashee.

“It hurts B.C. ranchers and farmers, who have faced rising input costs ever since the BC Liberals introduced the tax five years ago, and other industries as well.”

Released today in Vancouver, the BC Conservatives’ Budget and Fiscal Framework, 2013/14 – 2017/18, shows that the carbon tax will be phased-out over a four-year period, with an average annual reduction in revenues of $300 million. The total, annual cost of repealing the carbon tax is expected to be $1.2 billion.

“There is no question that Victoria could use an extra $1.2 billion each and every year,” said Anderson. “But the carbon tax is fundamentally unfair – it hurts British Columbians on the basis of where they live, and the businesses they work in. “The right thing to do is to repeal the tax – and we’ve done it.”

Yeah.

That's obvious, and I didn't need a professional economist to figure that out.

I don't know what the proposed rate would be for the U.S., but for Europe it ranges from $60 to $100.

At those rates, then even with the credit, the contractor or sub-contractor scenario would still have the guy paying a net additional tax of $500 per year just for gas money to drive his work truck and tool trailer.

So, basically every carpenter, plumber, electrician, welder, concrete finisher, lumberjack, or other construction worker or small business owner or small to medium farmer or rancher, would get screwed by this law, losing half a week to a week's income, DOE and current income, as a matter of first order impacts.

There's lots of other fields which do contract work at random locations, such as interior decorating, sales, certainly delivery, any 3rd party shipping company (UPS, FedEx, etc,). These will get hosed too, and if shipping costs goes up so does end price, which will hurt sales, which hurts revenues. See how this works?!

Regarding your argument, I hear you. It is much more important to keep our debt slave economy running than it is to try to prevent a 6 degree C world. Yup, keep those shipping costs down, and we can overshoot even more, making the end of the ecosystem and our species inevitable. Good plan!!! LOL.

Actually ... the best thing that can happen at this point is kill the debt slave economy and leave the carbon in the ground where it belongs. The Sanders bill should be re-written so it does just that.

If it's just something everyone gets, then that's also not fair, because people who live in the city will get the full credit, just because they live within walking distance of work or some such, while people who drive to work will get screwed.

So what? Everyone else works for city dwellers now?

Two accountants:

One lives in the city, the other lives in the suburbs, they both work for the same firm and make the same income. The one who lives in the suburbs is a defacto servant of the one who lives in the city, because you penalize him for driving to work.

Random families where each individual works in an opposite random direction (or in a different town,) will also be more heavily penalized than the "lucky ones" who both work near the same location.

There is no rationality to those scenarios because in the first paragraph scenario, one guy is penalized because of where he lives, and in the second scenario, you're penalized because spouses don't usually work in the same location, and idealizing individual employment opportunities is not possible.

If everyone lived in a world where all nodes were the same distance from every other node, it would be a fair system, but the real world isn't anywhere near that, so it's rigged and punishes random people randomly for no specific reason that they can control...

More on the Britsh Columbia carbon tax - perhaps soon to be the former taxLink:

“The tax has been – and is – unfair to British Columbians who live in rural and northern regions of the province,” said Scott Anderson, chair of the BC Conservatives’ Public Finance committee, and candidate in Vernon-Monashee.

“It hurts B.C. ranchers and farmers, who have faced rising input costs ever since the BC Liberals introduced the tax five years ago, and other industries as well.”

Released today in Vancouver, the BC Conservatives’ Budget and Fiscal Framework, 2013/14 – 2017/18, shows that the carbon tax will be phased-out over a four-year period, with an average annual reduction in revenues of $300 million. The total, annual cost of repealing the carbon tax is expected to be $1.2 billion.

“There is no question that Victoria could use an extra $1.2 billion each and every year,” said Anderson. “But the carbon tax is fundamentally unfair – it hurts British Columbians on the basis of where they live, and the businesses they work in. “The right thing to do is to repeal the tax – and we’ve done it.”

I don't know what the proposed rate would be for the U.S., but for Europe it ranges from $60 to $100.

At those rates, then even with the credit, the contractor or sub-contractor scenario would still have the guy paying a net additional tax of $500 per year just for gas money to drive his work truck and tool trailer.

So, basically every carpenter, plumber, electrician, welder, concrete finisher, lumberjack, or other construction worker or small business owner or small to medium farmer or rancher, would get screwed by this law, losing half a week to a week's income, DOE and current income, as a matter of first order impacts.

There's lots of other fields which do contract work at random locations, such as interior decorating, sales, certainly delivery, any 3rd party shipping company (UPS, FedEx, etc,). These will get hosed too, and if shipping costs goes up so does end price, which will hurt sales, which hurts revenues. See how this works?!

more info for British Columbia, the only province where the carbon tax is in effect: Link

The tax rates on July 1, 2012 are based on $30 per tonne of CO2 equivalent emissions, increasing by $5 per tonne from $25 per tonne imposed since July 2011.

Since different fuels generate different amounts of GHG when burned, $30 per tonne of CO2 equivalent must be translated into tax rates for each specific type of fuel. The following table shows the per unit rates for selected fuels at July 1, 2012. For example, effective July 1, 2012 the rate for gasoline will be 6.67 cents per litre. The tax rate for diesel will be slightly higher at 7.67 cents per litre due to the higher carbon content of the fuel, while the tax on propane will be lower on a per litre basis.

Quoting FLwolverine: Here's some information about the carbon tax in British Columbia.Link. Also this:

Fact: A major component of the personal and business income tax cuts provided as part of the revenue neutral carbon tax is the ongoing low income climate action tax credit designed to help offset the carbon tax paid by low-income individuals and families. The credit is paid quarterly along with the federal GST credit and BC HST Credit.

The credit provides an annual maximum of $115.50 for each adult and $34.50 for each child ($115.50 for the first child in a single parent family). The maximum credit is reduced by 2 per cent of net income in excess of $31,711 for single individuals and $36,997 for families.

And this: Revenue neutrality is intended to apply to the total carbon tax revenues collected rather than on a sector by sector or individual basis. If everyone was given back the exact amount of carbon tax they paid there would be no incentive to use less fuel and reduce emissions. Some individuals, businesses, or sectors will pay more than they receive through recycling measures and some will pay less, but the carbon tax as a whole is revenue neutral. All carbon tax revenue is returned to taxpayers through tax reductions.

All from the above link.

What is the "dollar per ton" tax in Canada?

I don't know what the proposed rate would be for the U.S., but for Europe it ranges from $60 to $100.

At those rates, then even with the credit, the contractor or sub-contractor scenario would still have the guy paying a net additional tax of $500 per year just for gas money to drive his work truck and tool trailer.

So, basically every carpenter, plumber, electrician, welder, concrete finisher, lumberjack, or other construction worker or small business owner or small to medium farmer or rancher, would get screwed by this law, losing half a week to a week's income, DOE and current income, as a matter of first order impacts.

There's lots of other fields which do contract work at random locations, such as interior decorating, sales, certainly delivery, any 3rd party shipping company (UPS, FedEx, etc,). These will get hosed too, and if shipping costs goes up so does end price, which will hurt sales, which hurts revenues. See how this works?!

2) Any plane can fly over the area so long as they remain above 1000' AGL. (Note, however, that nearly all of the Exxon-imposed restricted area is within Little Rock's Class E controlled airspace, which extends from 700' AGL upward.)

........ Again--and this, to me, is very valid--my problem with the airspace restriction isn't so much that it's there or even how large it is, but that the company that created the mess has been given control over who can fly over the site. That seems a little like a murder suspect dictating to the police detectives where, when, and how they're allowed to collect evidence. And that should strike just about anyone who isn't an unapologetic fan of Big Energy as wrong.

Thanks. That's very helpful. I would guess that being in class E controlled airspace means there are even more restrictions on who flies where and when. And I agree with your last paragraph. Certainly the on- the -ground photos of lawns and yards covered with black stuff were very striking. There's also the probability that, the harder it is to cover the leak, the less news coverage it will receive.

Quoting misanthrope:Actually, when I said revenue-neutral, I meant something like taking all of the money collected from the carbon tax each year and dividing it equally amongst all tax payers, no matter what their fossil fuel consumption. It would provide an incentive to reduce fossil fuel usage while protecting those at the lower end of the income scale. Or, as Scott mentioned, some of the tax money could be used to promote R&D into alternate fuel sources or increased efficiency. ..........

Here's some information about the carbon tax in British Columbia.Link. Also this:

Fact: A major component of the personal and business income tax cuts provided as part of the revenue neutral carbon tax is the ongoing low income climate action tax credit designed to help offset the carbon tax paid by low-income individuals and families. The credit is paid quarterly along with the federal GST credit and BC HST Credit.

The credit provides an annual maximum of $115.50 for each adult and $34.50 for each child ($115.50 for the first child in a single parent family). The maximum credit is reduced by 2 per cent of net income in excess of $31,711 for single individuals and $36,997 for families.

And this: Revenue neutrality is intended to apply to the total carbon tax revenues collected rather than on a sector by sector or individual basis. If everyone was given back the exact amount of carbon tax they paid there would be no incentive to use less fuel and reduce emissions. Some individuals, businesses, or sectors will pay more than they receive through recycling measures and some will pay less, but the carbon tax as a whole is revenue neutral. All carbon tax revenue is returned to taxpayers through tax reductions.

Wow. That would be like a carbon tax and a circus clown tax in one. That's perfect!

Banning those irrational wastes of fuel would be even better.

On this I agree with you. What do you think the chances are of convincing fans/users to give up that particular part of their lifestyle in order to save civilization? My guess is slim (very very slim) to none.

From lakes and grasslands with hippos and giraffes to a vast desert, North Africa's sudden geographical transformation 5,000 years ago was one of the planet's most dramatic climate shifts.

The findings come from analyses of dust blown west from Africa and dropped into the Atlantic Ocean. Researchers sifted through 30,000 years of dust and ocean bottom muck retrieved with ocean drilling ships. The changing levels of windblown dust in the ocean sediments provide scientists with clues to Africa's climate and how it has changed over time. Simply put, a lot of dust means drier conditions and less dust means a wetter environment.

The wet period, called the African Humid Period, started and ended suddenly, confirming previous studies by other groups, the sediments revealed. However, toward the Humid Period's end about 6,000 years ago, the dust was at about 20 percent of today's level, far less dusty than previous estimates, the study found.

One thing that you fail to mention is that most proposals for a carbon tax envision a revenue neutral tax. So, folks may have to pay $10 a gallon for milk but they'll also be getting that $5000 tax rebate check from Uncle Sam every year.

...or they reward companies pushing R&D for sustainable energy sources or clean energy sources, which would allow for those responsible for producing and transporting that gallon of milk the option of using better energy sources at a more reasonable price. Milk produced and transported with more sustainable energy sources would have an incentive and reduced cost, probably preventing the $10/gal situation entirely as long as companies actually used the market as intended.

One thing that you fail to mention is that most proposals for a carbon tax envision a revenue neutral tax. So, folks may have to pay $10 a gallon for milk but they'll also be getting that $5000 tax rebate check from Uncle Sam every year.

If they did that it would not accomplish the stated goals of reducing carbon footprint.

That would be pointless, not to mention creating a net deficit in government spending again. If you collect taxes and then just pay them back, you have hire more auditors (IRS), which means you run a net loss.

People would have to keep the receipts of every gallon of fuel they buy and file either a new form on a tax return, or file an itemized return, and itemized deductions don't count unless your total exceeds your standard deduction. Since the lower 1/2 of earners cannot itemize, nobody would qualify for the credit or deduction, if it was done via itemizing. If it's done via another form, tax preparers will charge another 20 to 25 dollars to prepare people's return. Everyone loses anyway.

The goal of a carbon tax is to force people and corporations to change to as-yet non-existent technologies, which are supposedly cleaner. Unfortunately, the cleaner technologies are absurdly impractical and even downright impossible for so many sectors of the market.

Do you have any idea how much this is going to cost to farmers and ranchers? Say from the guy who owns 50 to 200 head of cattle on 2 or 3 plots of land (more fuel to drive around and inspect things), all the way up to the biggest farms which can be hundreds or thousands of cattle owned by one corporation or one family.

Do you know how much fuel it costs to fertilize a hay field, cut the hay, rake the hay, bale the hay?

Do you know what that will do to the cost of meat?

A credit or deduction cannot easily fit that anyway, because it's not a linear quantification. The feedbacks of the increased fuel cost hits every part of the market.

Labor costs more because it costs the worker more to drive to work.Refrigeration costs more because of energy.Food costs more because a tractor uses diesel.Meats cost exponentially more because hay and other animal feed is much more expensive.

Have you ever seen a tax return for someone who is filing schedule C, D and F every year, and has 10 to 25 1099 employees, ranging from mostly part time to a few full time? To have your taxes prepared by a professional can cost $1000 or more every year. That's not what they owe. That's what it costs to get someone to file the return to figure out what they owe...

People who are required to file this type of tax return don't necessarily make significantly more (or any more) money than anyone else; small local contractors who own a small farm on the side, etc. Yet it costs them 5 times as much to get their tax return prepared because of all the absurd records they have to keep; every nut tree on a piece of land they own from when their grandparents planted it, every cow they bought or sold or birthed, all the hay they bought or sold, etc, etc. It's absolutely ridiculous and can take weeks just to do the darn thing.

People like that MUST drive around between all their jobs and all their assets to make sure everything is working right, and it's unavoidable.

You may say something silly like people should get more specialized or whatever, but what may be idealized globally or at the civilization wide scale, macro-economics, is not necessarily idealized for individuals. Individuals are the ones who pay taxes, and they are the one who lose and who suffer when energy prices are artificially inflated.

Quoting RTSplayer:Also, African's suffer primarily because of their parents' irresponsibility; having an 5 to 8 per woman birth rate in a nation that already can't feed and clothe itself is a human rights violation by the PARENTS, not other nations' or other governments.

I also blame both Islam and Catholicism for a very big part of that problem, because they teach women that their purpose in existence is to produce as many offspring as physically possible, even when it has clearly become impractical and even immoral to do so.

If it wasn't for the U.N., as well as American and European Christian charities working in Africa, they wouldn't have much of what's good going for them. Yet it is also a shame that Europeans and Americans continue to buy diamonds and gold from Africa, where slave labor, or virtual slave labor, is the majority of the labor force in those mines. The next time you buy a piece of jewelry for the missus, just remember that. "Certified" means nothing either, since the global market is influenced by the black market anyway. Which is to say, if not for all those slaves digging dirt in an African Gold or diamond mine, you wouldn't be able to have an engagement ring. And they? They were sold into slavery, not by the U.S. or Europe, but by their own mothers, who make a living (or else escape an even worse poverty,) by selling each new child as a slave. Human trafficking starts at home in Africa.

You cannot judge third or second world culture by first world standards. When people do not have access to the education or resources to control birth, you cannot blame them for not making an informed decision on number of children. Also an important thing to remember is the child mortality rate (represents children under 5 that die) is over 10% in 30 African countries. It's simple nature to have an abundance of children to ensure survival when in some cases, like Chad, 1 of every 5 children die before the age of five.As for the diamond mining and what not. You are dead on. I actually find it absurd that we humans are so fascinated by shiny rocks.

Also, African's suffer primarily because of their parents' irresponsibility; having an 5 to 8 per woman birth rate in a nation that already can't feed and clothe itself is a human rights violation by the PARENTS, not other nations' or other governments.

I also blame both Islam and Catholicism for a very big part of that problem, because they teach women that their purpose in existence is to produce as many offspring as physically possible, even when it has clearly become impractical and even immoral to do so.

If it wasn't for the U.N., as well as American and European Christian charities working in Africa, they wouldn't have much of what's good going for them. Yet it is also a shame that Europeans and Americans continue to buy diamonds and gold from Africa, where slave labor, or virtual slave labor, is the majority of the labor force in those mines. The next time you buy a piece of jewelry for the missus, just remember that. "Certified" means nothing either, since the global market is influenced by the black market anyway. Which is to say, if not for all those slaves digging dirt in an African Gold or diamond mine, you wouldn't be able to have an engagement ring. And they? They were sold into slavery, not by the U.S. or Europe, but by their own mothers, who make a living (or else escape an even worse poverty,) by selling each new child as a slave. Human trafficking starts at home in Africa.

Not really. There are lots of solutions that are available. Carpooling, busses, company vans, whatever they did in WWII, etc.

Difficult, yes.

Lol.

Residential trade workers in this country barely make a living, and you're talking about busses and vans? Who is going to pay for that and where? These types of jobs don't work like that because you never have the same destination and you never have the same route.

Contractors don't pay people enough as it is, do you think they're going to pay for buses or vans?

What planet do you live on? I'm just curious...

A framing crew can't walk to work when they have to haul a tool trailer and go across the state to get to a job site, and they don't make enough money as it is, and they already carpool as much as possible as is...

As for other people, my sister drives about 8 miles each way to work, while her husband has a desk job, and he drives about 50 miles each way to work. There is no solution to that, because of the nature of their work. It's not something you can change location for, and it's not something you can change professions. So what you're saying is people like that will be given a choice of either keep their good job and pay an obscene carbon tax just to get to work, OR quit their good job and take a local job which will (certainly) pay less? And your goal is of course that he quits his job and takes a pay cut, for the sake of carbon emissions, because if he does not quit his job, then his carbon emissions will not decrease, and the paper dollars of the tax won't be preventing pollution, and won't be helping anybody anyway.

Real jobs markets don't work like Sim City or some other idealized theory crafting. Normal people, especially married people, can't always just pick up and move on a dime because some other job is better, nor quit driving to work because they want to cut pollution. What a joke.

Global Warming and its knock on consequences will kill more poor Americans than anything else in the next 15 years.

Not really.

Droughts in the 80's weren't AGW related, and they're still by far the most deadly weather related events in my lifetime in the U.S. In fact, just one year of 1980's droughts was worse than 2 decades worth of hurricane and tornado related deaths combined. Further, since the first 11 named storms every year would have happened anyway, it's by no means fair to blame AGW for all the hurricane deaths, and since the worst tornado outbreaks happened a long time ago too, one bad recent year, being two years ago, isn't such a big deal.

You want to talk suffering?

Just wait till that $10 per gallon (2013 U.S.) milk arrives due to the carbon tax.

they punish all of the contract labor, i.e. "trade" jobs horrendously, because they have to drive all over the state to do their various jobs, especially residential construction and roads construction.

plumberselectricianscarpentersconcrete finishers, etc.

Because commuting distance varies, on one job you might drive 15 miles, and on the next you might literally drive 90 miles. You have a truck and tool trailer so you're only getting some pathetic mileage like 6 or 10 MPG or so.

So let's say you're lucky and you average 30 miles there and 30 back commuting, and you average 5 days per week. And let's say your lucky again and you average 10mpg for your tool truck, because that's about what it is. That would be an additional $3 per day in taxes, or about $780 per year in "carbon tax" on fuel just to get to work and back (at the projected EU carbon tax rate).

How is that fair to anyone?!

That doesn't count the cost of living feedbacks, the cost of food, clothing, lumber, etc, which I mentioned, by example, in the previous post which will hit everyone.

They're going to totally bankrupt their working class.

Not really. There are lots of solutions that are available. Carpooling, busses, company vans, whatever they did in WWII, etc.

Difficult, yes. Impossible, not hardly.

If you think the argument, "We cannot save the world, because some poor Americans will lose their jobs" makes any sense, it doesn't to everyone else:

The third world starvation level farmer who has to walk 6 miles for water.

The poor around the world who sacrifice for the planet already.

The poor in America who are going to be hit by: raising food costs, flooding cities, health problems, etc.

etc. etc.

If you want to wrap yourself in the "I'm only concerned about the poor" flag, then you need to not be hypocritical. Global Warming and its knock on consequences will kill more poor Americans than anything else in the next 15 years.

they punish all of the contract labor, i.e. "trade" jobs horrendously, because they have to drive all over the state to do their various jobs, especially residential construction and roads construction.

plumberselectricianscarpentersconcrete finishers, etc.

Because commuting distance varies, on one job you might drive 15 miles, and on the next you might literally drive 90 miles. You have a truck and tool trailer so you're only getting some pathetic mileage like 6 or 10 MPG or so.

So let's say you're lucky and you average 30 miles there and 30 back commuting, and you average 5 days per week. And let's say your lucky again and you average 10mpg for your tool truck, because that's about what it is. That would be an additional $3 per day in taxes, or about $780 per year in "carbon tax" on fuel just to get to work and back (at the projected EU carbon tax rate).

How is that fair to anyone?!

That doesn't count the cost of living feedbacks, the cost of food, clothing, lumber, etc, which I mentioned, by example, in the previous post which will hit everyone.

They're going to totally bankrupt their working class.

Wait until global warming hits. Bankrupt versus starving, out of work and then dead. I know which I'd take.

they punish all of the contract labor, i.e. "trade" jobs horrendously, because they have to drive all over the state to do their various jobs, especially residential construction and roads construction.

plumberselectricianscarpentersconcrete finishers, etc.

Because commuting distance varies, on one job you might drive 15 miles, and on the next you might literally drive 90 miles. You have a truck and tool trailer so you're only getting some pathetic mileage like 6 or 10 MPG or so.

So let's say you're lucky and you average 30 miles there and 30 back commuting, and you average 5 days per week. And let's say your lucky again and you average 10mpg for your tool truck, because that's about what it is. That would be an additional $3 per day in taxes, or about $780 per year in "carbon tax" on fuel just to get to work and back (at the projected EU carbon tax rate).

How is that fair to anyone?!

That doesn't count the cost of living feedbacks, the cost of food, clothing, lumber, etc, which I mentioned, by example, in the previous post which will hit everyone.

Quoting spathy:If my blatherings have been incoherent here in the past/as a whole.(they have) Please read this last post to get a grip on where my thinking is based.I want a clean non Carbon future.But we just cant ever hope to get there via Federal Government and stagnating policies.I beg of you to contemplate that reality.

Non-carbon future is never going to happen, even if every conceivable technology becomes available.

If demand for carbon-based fuels drops low enough, someone, somewhere will be able to buy it cheap. Third world countries will eventually get something going, and they'll buy the oil and coal all the post-modern civilizations no longer use.

World population is increasing 13% per decade, exponentially. So if we converted about 10% of world energy use per decade to non-carbon based energy, we would still be INCREASING the net amount of carbon based fuels consumed.

A carbon tax is a "poor tax" because it is a consumption tax. Everyone who drives to work every day has no choice. If you want a job, you must have transportation.

EV cost 2 or 3 times as much as combustion engine automobiles. Since about 1/3rd of the workforce already uses used autos, because they can't afford the cost of a new one, then it's obvious they won't be able to afford a switch to the require EV. Taxing them on carbon won't make the switch any easier.

Carbon Tax would also unfairly punish people who live in rural or suburban areas, and it would unfairly punish farmers and ranchers who NEED these fuels to produce the FOOD you eat. If a gallon of gasoline goes up by another 50 cents per gallon, as it would with a European $60 per ton carbon tax, then the cost of food will go up tremendously, because you have greatly increased the cost of production at every level:

How many acres do you think a theoretical electric tractor can plow, or haul a combine for harvesting wheat, using any existing battery? Not much, that's for sure. I can assure you that takes FAR more energy than driving an EV to work and back.

Driving up the cost of transportation through carbon taxes will drive up the cost of living. Owning an automobile is already as much as 1/3rd to 1/2 of some people's income by the time you count purchase price, insurance, fuel, licensing, and maintenance. Do you want that fraction to go up another 5 or 10%?

The government already gives back $2000 to $6000 per year to the lower 15% of people, because the basic fees and consumption taxes has driven up the cost of living for that group to the point that it's require to be offset anyway.

Oh yeah, conflicting standards in automobiles currently make it much more difficult than it might otherwise be to increase fuel economy.

Safety standards make it harder to cut weight, therefore making it harder to increase mileage.

Absurd standards on windshields mean we are constantly wasting energy to replace a windshield which has an insignificant crack in it. Melting glass takes a lot of energy, but if you're a glass manufacturer, you want these absurd standards, because it increases sales.

Convert 2 lane streets to 3 lanes to reduce stoppage waste.

Reduce the speed limit by 5 or 10 mph (Ek= 1/2mv^2).

These are all examples of wasteful stupidity which could be solved without taxing the poor and middle class, and would actually reduce the cost of living...

It is little surprise that Alex stumbled onto climate denier talking points, since nearly all climate denier books have ties to conservative think tanks. Internal documents obtained by ThinkProgress last year revealed that the right-wing, Koch-funded think tank Heartland Institute developed a curriculum teaching children that climate science is a controversial matter. On the other hand, a mere 24 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming, compared to a staggering 13,926 scientific articles that substantiate it.

If Limbaugh thinks a 13-year-old is where to find the truth about climate science, perhaps he can next invite a 12-year-old to discuss evolution.

Yet many top Republicans in the Senate and House subscribe to the same view. The climate zombie caucus has a wide net of Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), former ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee James Inhofe (R-OK), House Science Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX), and House Science subcommittee chair Chris Stewart (R-UT), and many others.